CONTENTed FILMS

Thanks to James, Ben, Marie and Kate for the warm welcome in Liverpool for Liverpool Lift-Off film festival.

The festival used a selection of venues around the city not normally associated with film. The film was screened at Kazimier a wonderful old dance hall in the city centre. Finding Joy was really well received by a very cool audience many of whom were more then happy show the organisers and film makers some of the more interesting late-night watering holes to celebrate Lift Off’s Liverpool debut.

As winner of Best Narrative Feature Finding Joy will now screen at sister festivals Los Angeles and London Lift Off later in the year.

Albert Dock, Liverpool

Good News! URBAN ISLAND, a documentary music video by Nils Clauss and Namhui Park, just won the AUDIENCE AWARD at the French international film festival PREMIERS COURTS with 70% of the votes. The video features the song VARÚÐ by Icelandic band SIGUR RÓS.

The story focuses on a homeless man in his forties, who has lived on the streets of Seoul for more than 8 years. He has been part of a small homeless community for the past four years, which camps out in a little park next to the train tracks of Yongsan Station. As the man strictly refuses to receive charity, he frequents the city streets each night to make a living by collecting recyclables.

Looking forward to our trip to Dublin where our first feature film Finding Joy will be shown at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on Monday 20th of February in the Lighthouse Cinema at 6pm.

You can find out a little more about the film here. Thanks to Alistair Daniel for the nice write up.

If you’re in town please come along if you can make it. We’re really happy that the film will be shown at the Lighthouse. Hopefully the festival will be the start of a long and fruitful second life for one of the coolest cinemas you’ll find, well, anywhere.

Bright lights, big city and a taste of life in the fast lane. Sometimes the lure can be too much even for a fish.

Check out Nils’ new music video made with Stuart Howe of Studio 163. The video contrasts life in rural Korea with an adventure in the city, Seoul, in all it’s neon glory.

The video is part of the Genero.tv competition for Schmidt. The winner is chosen on the basis of Facebook ‘likes’ so if you do like it we’d appreciate your vote, and don’t forget to share it with your friends.

http://genero.tv/watch-video/32414/

Wow! Nice surprise to hear that Contented’s Royksopp – Senior Living music video has been nominated in the category Best Alternative Video – International, for an award in the 2011 UK Music Video Awards.

http://www.ukmva.com/content/shortlist

We’ll be up against one of our heroes, Spike Jonze, who’s video for Arcade Fire is also nominated in the same category.

Check out some of the other great videos on youtube. MGMT – Congratulations and Ok go – all is not lost are both really nice.

WOLF + LAMB vs SOUL CLAP | LONELY C . music video from Nils Clauss and Neil Dowling on Vimeo.

Our latest music video Lonely C by Wolf + Lamb vs Soulclap has been chosen as a featured video on Vimeo’s HD channel. This is great news as it means the video is getting seen by a lot of people. Almost 10,000 people have seen it over the last day and a half to add to the more than 3,000 who have seen it on youtube. So far the comments have been extremely positive. If you haven’t had a chance to drop by yet please do and don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Our recent video for Royksopp’s Senior gets a nice mention in the British Film Institute’s influential magazine Sight and Sound in their new music video blog written by David Knight. Here’s what he had to say -

Just recently Norwegian electronica superstars Royksöpp invited filmmakers to make videos for any track on their latest album Senior (just one among several music artists who have organised a video competition in the past year on the Australian-based website Genero.tv).

In the space of a few weeks over 150 entries were received – and BUG screened the very best of these at a Royksöpp special last month. They were very good indeed – not least a movie by Seoul-based Irish writer-director Neil Dowling and German cameraman Nils Clauss for the track ‘Senior Living’, which is as good as anything I’ve seen in the past six months

You can also check out the full blog here -

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/comment/music-video-blog-201103.php

We have just finished the edit on our latest project a music video for the song Lonely C by Wolf+Lamb Vs Soulclap. For this project we decided to put on our wellies head out to the farmland of Jeollabuk-do province, South Korea.

Thanks so much to the Kim family for their hospitality and their participation, not to mention their patience.

The video tells the story of a brother and sister who have grown up together and still live and work on their parents small farm. Their closeness has crossed a line however into a stronger attraction or longing for one another. As they try to contain their feelings and deal with the shame they both feel music is the place they turn to find some inner peace.

Making a piece that involves overtones of incest is a sensitive operation at the best of times, but when you are using a real family as your actors it requires an even more delicate approach. Luckily the family had a great sense of humour and had a good laugh about it. Thanks also to Youngsook and Songman for coming down and for the great work they put in.

The video will be online soon but for now check out some of the stills.